A SHORT HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF CYPRUS

* c. 8,500 - 8,000 B.C Hunter Gatherers

* 7,000 - 5,300 B.C. The first settlers: the Khirokitians.

* 4,000 - 2,500 B.C. Chalcolitic (Copper) Age: stone crucifix pendants are carved.

* 2,700-1,600 B.C. Cypriot Bronze Ages, Early and Middle: cattle, horses, and bronze making are introduced as well as highly individual pottery style.

* 1,600-1,050 B.C. The Late Bronze Age: period of sophisticated literate city states such as Enkomi-Alasia and Kition.

* 1500 - 1450 BC: Hittite rule in Cyprus

* 1450 BC - 1000 BC: Beginning of the Egyptian domination of the island.

* 1200 BC - 1000: Establishment of the city states of Salamis (capital at the time), Soli, Marion, Paphos, Kurium, and Kyrenia; arrival of Greek colonies.

* 1,000 - 850 B.C. The coming of Iron, the Dorians and a Dark Age also known as Cypro-Geometric I and II.

* 850 - 750 B.C The Phonecian-led Renaissance

* 750 BC - 612 BC: Assyrian rule of Cyprus.

* 568 BC - 525 BC: Egyptian rule.

* 525 BC - 333 BC: Persian occupation and the rule of the island.

* 333 BC - 58 BC: Hellenistic rule: the heirs of the Alexander the Great rule the island.

* 58 BC - 395 AD: Roman Empire ruling Cyprus: 350 years of quiet provincial prosperity.

* 395 AD - 1191 AD: Island becomes a part of the Byzantine Empire.

* 1191 AD - 1192: Rule of the island by Richard the Lionheart, of England.

* 1192 AD - 1489 AD: Rule of the island by the Frankish Lusignan dynasty.

* 1489 - 1570: Venetian domination of the island.

* 1571 - 1878: Conquest of the island by the Ottoman Empire.

* 1878 - 1925: In accordance with a defence-alliance between Britain and the Ottoman Empire, the administration of Cyprus passes to Britain.

* 1925 - 1960: Cyprus is annexed by Britain when Ottoman Empire enters into the World War I on the side of Germany; subsequently the island becomes a British Crown colony and under the British rule.

* 1960: Foundation of the Republic of Cyprus (by the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities).

* 1963: Inter-communal strife in Cyprus and the subsequent collapse of the constitutional rule.

* 1974: Coup d'etat by the Greek army officers stationed on the island to overthrow the President (Makarios) with the aim of uniting the island with Greece; subsequent Turkish Military intervention (under the provisions of the Treaty of Guarantee of the Republic of Cyprus).

* 1974: Division of the island into Turkish-Cypriot North and Greek-Cypriot South; Declaration of the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus, to pave way for a federal settlement on the island.

* November 15, 1983: Foundation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

 

CYPRUS: A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

Throughout history Cyprus has been central to conflict between East and West in the Eastern Mediterranean. In pre-Christian times the indigenous population was augmented by Aegean and Greek colonists. Phoenician culture, which spread from their trading colonies, was also not unimportant, and for long periods Cyprus was tied to the East by the Persian rule. But, eventually with the Alexander the Great, Greek culture became predominant, transmuted through the Roman occupation and conversion to Christianity into a Byzantine form. This did not protect the inhabitants of Cyprus from damaging Arab raids in the expansionist age of Islam which, although they did not create settlements, forced the population into the interior for safety where they established castles in inaccessible places, notably on the Kyrenia range.

The first mediaeval conquerors of Cyprus were the English. On the third Crusade Richard I, when insulted and defied by the self-proclaimed emperor Isaac Comnenus, landed and easily defeated Isaac's forces. Richard soon occupied the island, and married, and had crowned there the Queen of England, Berengaria of Navvare. English rule was short-lived, never the less. The island soon passed to the care of the French Guy de Lusignan, in recompense for his loss of Jerusalem. Under the Lusignan family Cyprus was to remain until 1489, when it passed under Venetian control. For the Venetians it was an important trading entrepôt, as it had been for the Phoenicians. Cyprus was also in the Venetians' time an outpost against the Ottoman Empire, as it had been the outpost for the Greeks against the Persians, for the Byzantines against the Arabs, and for the Crusaders against the Saracens. When the West held Cyprus it was strategically of importance to them whenever the Anatolian and Eastern Mediterranean littorals were in hostile hands.

In 1571 the West lost Cyprus, when it was captured by the Ottomans. For three centuries or more Cyprus became a backwater -neither a place d'armes nor an entrepôt. It was a somewhat troublesome possession, but mainly because Ottoman rule became exacting and corrupt. The form of calamity was visited, however, upon Turks as well on the existing population since the Ottomans colonised Cyprus with settlers from Anatolia, all rather carefully chosen to provide a selection of skills needed to make the island prosper again after the devastation of war.

It is important that the Ottomans did not take the island from the indigenous population but from the Venetians. The Byzantine population, the Romans (Rumlar), as the Turks still call the Greek-Cypriots, was freed from the Latin yoke that they had borne for centuries. There was, therefore, no especial hostility between the Greek and the Turkish populations, who could, and often did, combine to protest against the Ottoman rule when it was excessive even though they did not mix much socially. In fact, the Orthodox Christian Church was given privileges and freedoms to a degree not countenanced by their former Latin rulers, though it must always be remembered that they were mostly tolerated as 'People of the Book'.

From: C.H. Dodd,(1993), 'Cyprus: A Historical Introduction', in C.H.Dodd (ed.), "The Political, Social, and Economic Development of Northern Cyprus", Eothen Press, Huntingdon, Cambridegeshire, England.